Court: Record Error Need Not Hurt Police

WASHINGTON - — The Supreme Court ruled on Wednesday that when police rely on faulty computer records to make arrests, evidence seized does not have to be dismissed automatically.

In a 7-2 opinion, the high court said in an Arizona case that the rule under which evidence is held invalid if police seize it unconstitutionally cannot be applied to a case of police computer error.

At issue was the arrest of Isaac Evans of Phoenix in January 1991 for marijuana possession. A patrol officer initially stopped Evans for driving the wrong way down a one-way street in front of a police station.

A computer check showed that an arrest warrant had been issued for him for failing to appear in court on traffic violations. After stopping Evans, the officer arrested him when he found marijuana in the car. Later, court officials discovered that the warrant had been quashed 17 days before Evans' car was stopped.

In state court, Evans argued that the police officer found marijuana only after relying on a faulty computer record. Therefore, Evans said, the so-called exclusionary rule requires that the evidence must be suppressed because it was fruit of an "unreasonable" search under the Fourth Amendment.

Evans won his case before the Arizona Supreme Court last year. That decision was reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday.